''United States v. Pace'', 955

F.2d The ''Federal Reporter'' () is a case law reporter in the United States that is published by West Publishing and a part of the National Reporter System. It begins with cases decided in 1880; pre-1880 cases were later retroactively compiled by We ...

270 (5th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, is a

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (in case citations, 5th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * Eastern District of Louisiana * M ...

court decision relating to the

open fields doctrine The open-fields doctrine (also open-field doctrine or open-fields rule), in the U.S. law of criminal procedure, is the legal doctrine that a "warrantless search of the area outside a property owner's curtilage" does not violate the Fourth Amendme ...

limiting the scope of the Fourth Amendment of the

U.S. Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...

. Acting on a tip,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

investigators, entered onto the defendant's property in

Travis County Travis County is located in south central Texas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,290,188. It is the fifth-most populous county in Texas. Its county seat is Austin, the capital of Texas. The county was established in 1840 and is na ...

and peeked through a hole in a barn where they discovered

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

being cultivated. With this information the officers gained a

search warrant A search warrant is a court order that a magistrate or judge issues to authorize law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person, location, or vehicle for evidence of a crime and to confiscate any evidence they find. In most countries, ...

, which they used to search the property. The defendant was eventually arrested, tried and convicted for ''possession with intent to distribute''. The defendant challenged on Fourth Amendment grounds, claiming that the barn was inside the "curtilage" of his home. The court found that it was not and that the search was legal pursuant to the "open fields" doctrine. The court held that the search was

constitutional A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princip ...

and that the barn was not within the curtilage of the appellant's home because the barn was located a significant distance from the house, was separated from the house by an interior fence, was not being used for activities associated with the intimacies of home life, and was readily visible from the surrounding area.

References

External links

* United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit cases United States Fourth Amendment case law 1992 in United States case law Cannabis law in the United States Drug control case law Travis County, Texas {{US-case-law-stub